NSI (Nodal Scene Interface) is a simple and flexible scene description API which is purposely designed to communicate with a render engine. It is used by the new 3Delight NSI renderer together with OSL (Open Shading Language) for shading. One of the goals of NSI is interactive rendering of editable scene descriptions: this feature, as well as many other, make NSI a perfect candidate for a Hydra rendering backend which we call HydraNSI (*hdNSI*).

**NSI** — The Nodal Scene Interface (NSI) is a simple and flexible scene description API which is purposely designed to communicate with a render engine. It is used by the new 3Delight NSI renderer together with OSL (Open Shading Language) for shading. One of the goals of NSI is interactive rendering of editable scene descriptions: this feature, as well as many other, make NSI a perfect candidate for a Hydra rendering backend which we call HydraNSI (*hdNSI*).

> https://gitlab.com/3DelightOpenSource/HydraNSI/blob/master/nsi.pdf

**HydraNSI** — Production-quality preview rendering of USD assets, in a viewer such as Hydra, is an appealing idea that allows for a centralised and standardised rendering application. HydraNSI is a Hydra plug-in that converts USD to NSI commands and allows to use 3Delight NSI as a rendering back-end with its rich feature and extensible platform.

HydraNSI can be easily compiled as a plug-in part of the USD toolset. It can naturally be used by any current and future application that implements the USD API as a data model, and which uses Hydra for visualization. As a practical example, it can be added to the USD viewing utility **usdview**.